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Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, and America's Public Lands
Abstract
Excerpted from book jacket:As the twenty-first century dawns, public land policy is entering a new era. Alluring new ecological management ideas and collaborative conservation initiatives are taking hold, fostering a sea change in how we value and oversee our public lands. This timely book examines the historical, scientific, political, legal, and institutional developments that are changing management priorities developments that compel us to view the public lands as an integrated ecological entity and a key biodiversity stronghold.Once the background is set, each chapter opens with a specific natural resource controversy, ranging from the Pacific Northwest's spotted owl imbroglio and the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction showdown to the struggle over southern Utah's Colorado Plateau country and the Quincy Library Group's forest restoration initiative. Robert Keiter uses these case histories to analyze the ideas, forces, and institutions that re both fomenting and retarding change on the western landscape. Enhancements to the text include line drawings by Robert Seabeck and maps.Although Congress has the final say in how the public domain is managed, the public land agencies, federal courts, and western communities are each playing important roles in the transformation to an ecological management regime. At the same time, a newly emerging and homegrown collaborative process movement has given the diverse public land constituencies a greater role in administering these lands, helping to take the sharp edges off the changes afoot. Arguing that we must integrate the new imperatives of ecosystem science with our devolutionary political tendencies, the author outlines a coherent new approach to natural resource policy for this century.
... Over the past two decades, ecosystem management has emerged as a dominant paradigm guiding public land and resource management in the United States (U.S.). Distinguishing dimensions of this paradigm include: managing for ecological integrity and sustainability; addressing problems at large ecosystem scales that may encompass land, aquatic, and marine environments; promoting institutional and public processes that are collaborative and adaptive; coordinating across landownership and jurisdictional and institutional boundaries; and incorporating human dimensions com-ponents (Grumbine 1994, Thomas 1994, Yaffee et al. 1996, Kohm and Franklin 1997, McDonnell and Pickett 1997, Cortner and Moote 1999, Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000, Meffe et al. 2002, Keiter 2003, Breen 2008, Layzer 2008, McLeod and Leslie 2009. ...
... The framework is based on a synthesis of the property rights, access, and institutional analysis literatures, but focuses on practical realities of public land use policy, planning, and management. The approach characterizes human linkages relevant to public land in the United States, taking into account the political, legal, and institutional history governing that land (Wilkinson 1992, Keiter 2003, Pierson 2004. Our objectives are to improve the use of social science to inform public land policy and management, further the use of existing agency data sets to understand linkages between people and public lands, and focus and prioritize analysts' efforts on the nature of natural-human ecosystem couplings. ...
This article presents the "Linkages to Public Land" (LPL) Framework, a general but comprehensive data-gathering and analysis approach aimed at informing citizen and agency decision making about the social environment of public land. This social assessment and planning approach identifies and categorizes various types of linkages that people have to public land and guides the tasks of finding and using information on people in those linkages. Linkages are defined as the "coupling mechanisms" that explain how and why humans interact with ecosystems, while linkage analyses are empirical investigations contextualized both temporally and geographically. The conceptual, legal, and theoretical underpinnings of five basic linkage categories (tribal, use, interest, neighboring land, and decision making) and further refinement into subcategories are explained. These categories are based upon the complex property and decision-making regimes governing public land. Applying an "inside-out" analytic perspective, the LPL Framework assesses the social environment inside public land units and traces linkages out into the larger social environment, instead of assessing the outside social environment (communities or stakeholders) and assuming linkages exist between the social entities and public lands, as is generally done in social assessments. The LPL Framework can be utilized in management activities such as assessing baseline conditions and designing monitoring protocols, planning and evaluating management alternatives, analyzing impacts of decisions, structuring public involvement and conflict management efforts, and conducting collaborative learning and stewardship activities. The framework enhances understanding of human dimensions of ecosystem management by providing a conceptual map of human linkages to public land and a stepwise process for focusing and contextualizing social analyses. The framework facilitates analysis of the compatibilities, conflicts, and trade-offs between various linkages, and between cumulative human linkages and capabilities of public land to sustain them. While the LPL Framework was developed for use in planning for U.S. National Forests, it could be applied to other types of public land in the United States and adapted and extended to public lands and common property areas in other countries.
... Such new arrangements for biodiversity conservation are increasingly portrayed as a new and promising bottom-up collaborative approach to ecosystem management and governance ''that relies upon cooperation rather than regulation for situation-specific problems" (Pincetl 2006). There is a call for more empirical work and questions concerning whose interests are served and what interests should prevail in devolving resource management authority (Keiter, 2003). Private conservation initiatives also raise questions about uneven environmental outcomes when environmental preservation decisions are left to private individuals. ...
... There is the further argument that environmental initiatives benefit from the incorporation of business models to mitigate the effects of cutbacks to environmental programs. Keiter (2003) suggests that collaborative ecosystem management approaches are a way to gain public support for new initiatives despite a pervasive distrust (in the United States) of government intervention. Low (2004) cautions against an easy acceptance of new local, decentralized and multi-actor governance arrangements as indicators of new forms of local autonomy and democratic practice. ...
With recent changes in the ways that state agencies are implementing their environmental policies, the line between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred. This includes shifts from state-led implementation of environmental policies to conservation plans that are implemented and managed by multi-sectoral networks of governments, the private sector and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). This paper examines land trusts as private conservation initiatives that become part of neoliberal governance arrangements and partnerships that challenge our conceptions of environmental preservation and democratic participation. The paper starts with an examination of the concept of neoliberalized environmental governance. Next, it addresses the shifting social constructions of property and land in the context of protecting large scale ecosystems. Through a case study of the extension of new environmental governance arrangements on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, we examine the relationships that have formed between different levels of the state and environmental non-governmental organizations. Finally, we analyze the expansion of land trusts and private conservation initiatives that are predicated on private land ownership and the commodification of nature, the emerging discourses and practices of private conservation, and how these are implicated in the privatization and neoliberalization of nature.
... In the 1970s and 1980s, land managers in a few key places, such as Yellowstone National Park, began to realize that federal lands were impacted by private land management outside their boundaries. Land managers also began to realize that species biodiversity was affected by land management on federal lands, as well as outside federal lands (Keiter 2003). Ecosystem management became prominent in federal land management and agency documents during the 1990s, described as an approach to land management that moved beyond dominant commodity uses to a systems approach. ...
As an analyst for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), I design and carry out policy studies mandated by law or requested by members of Congress. In 2006, GAO received a request to study federal land management agencies' use of ecosystem management. Procedurally, the analytical problem that I faced in designing a study to respond to this request was that the underlying policy problem was unclear and thus difficult to operationalize in a study. As the lead analyst, I used the policy sciences framework to assess the underlying problem and help design the study in the context of multiple federal policies and academic research. The policy sciences framework is useful for analysis of ongoing policy issues because it helps the analyst make sense of the activities, positions, and ideas in a particular policy arena. It helps the analyst create a map of the policy problem to better define the problem and identify possible policy alternatives.
... Every country went through particular idiosyncratic stages, but the process was essentially international, driven since the first half of the 19 th century by a strengthening public opinion and, eventually, citizen movements. Good national histories are available, variably sensitive to the international background scene; I'll mainly restrict the discussion below to Britain (Evans 1992;Adams 1996) and the US (Hays 1969;Keiter 2003;Andrews 2006), backed with my own Finnish experience. ...
Modern nature conservation is a product of post-Enlightenment modernity; I explore the heterogeneity of its conceptual and ideological background. The 19 th century legacy comprises concern over human-caused extinctions; protests against excessive hunting and cruelty toward animals; utilitarian care for natural resources; and romantic sensibility concerning the value of nature for human health and spirituality. The 20 th century added into conservation thinking increasing consciousness about human biospheric dependence; efforts to identify appropriate conservation targets; and most recently concern over the loss of biodiversity. The politics of nature conservation has taken shape within the framework of politics of nature, that is, choices vis-á-vis nature that have been made either as deliberate decisions on resource use or as side-effects of subsistence practices of various types. Because of tensions and conflicts with alternative ways of using nature, formulating realistic conservation policies has been a complicated task. Problems and uncertainties emerge: pursuing material aspirations of the current world society will necessarily bring about damage to ecological systems of the Earth. The way forward is to identify feasible alternatives in the midst of the tensions and ambiguities that arise, and to open up space for carrying through conservation initiatives.
... One example, familiar to scientists involved in large-scale ecosystem restoration, is adaptive management, in which decisions are not viewed as "final" but rather as hypotheses to be tested and revised on the basis of structured iterations of management experiments, data collection, and feedback. This process has been described in similar terms by experts in science (Walters and Holling, 1990), policy (Lee, 1993), and law (Keiter, 2003). ...
Legal mandates and scientific realities conflict when existing legal principles do not match the realities and limits of current science. Those conflicts can be addressed if scientists communicate the limits of existing scientific capabilities and if the legal system responds accordingly. One example of that phenomenon was the federal statutory response to the limits of science in toxic tort litigation. Scientists charged with restoration of Colorado River ecosystems work within an ambiguous and limiting legal framework. Federal statutes and other legal authorities governing Colorado River management often present conflicting goals and requirements and assume that existing patterns of water and energy use are inviolate. Colorado River restoration efforts also face physical impediments due to historical development along the river, alterations in hydrology, and other factors that are difficult or impossible to reverse. One key role of scientists in the legal and policy process is to communicate those limitations clearly. Based on that information, the legal and legislative communities could alter the existing law-science paradigm governing restoration programs. A broader concept of environmental restoration would seek replacements for some of the key resources currently drawn from the river (such as water and energy) and that currently limit restoration efficacy.
... Adaptive ecosystem management is another popular approach used by agencies to manage transboundary resources and intermixed ownership problems. ''Ecosystem management'' was put forth as a paradigm shift in the field because of its emphasis on biological diversity, scales, socially defined goals and objectives, integrated science, collaboration, transboundary/jurisdictional issues, and adaptable institutions and decision making processes (Cortner and Moote 1999;Grumbine 1994;Keiter 2003). These days, much of the focus is on the latter, with scholars and managers extolling the possibilities of ''adaptive management'' and its emphasis on experimentation, monitoring, and learning (Doremus 2001;Karkkainen 2001Karkkainen /2002Karkkainen , 2005). ...
This article analyzes the role of prescriptive regulation and citizen-suit litigation (regulatory enforcement) in natural
resource conservation in the USA. It first briefly explains why the judiciary is so involved in resource management and why
litigation is so often used as a conservation tool. It then summarizes the extent to which regulatory enforcement is being
threatened and/or undermined by Congress, the executive branch, and other interests. The analysis shows how regulatory enforcement
often facilitates the use of less adversarial conservation strategies and that there are important synergies between them.
Regulatory interactions with collaborative conservation, land and resource acquisitions/easements, and adaptive ecosystem
management are analyzed.
Akron native and former U.S. Representative John F. Seiberling (1918-2008) grew up on his family's estate overlooking Ohio's Cuyahoga River Valley. Within his lifetime, Seiberling would become a leading player in the movement to protect the natural environment and help transform his childhood playground into the federally protected Cuyahoga Valley National Park. A Passion for the Land begins with a fast-moving narrative of Seiberling's early life and a vivid description of the physical environment that stimulated his lifelong interests in nature and wilderness. Author Daniel Nelson provides a detailed examination of the congressman's role as a dedicated environmentalist, covering Seiberling's efforts to pass path-breaking legislation during the 1970s and the equally important period of defensive activity during the 1980s. Seiberling's successful bipartisan campaign to protect the Cuyahoga Valley became a stepping-stone to other important conservation efforts. Working with like-minded legislators and activists in the expanding environmental movement, he used his increasingly influential position in Congress as chair of the House Subcommittee on Public Lands to foster urban parks, transform Alaska, and make wilderness protection a hallmark of the new approach to public lands management. The result was the creation of 100 million acres of parks and refuges in Alaska and millions of acres of protected wilderness in national forests. Based largely on unpublished correspondence and other previously unused materials, A Passion for the Land concludes with a review of Seiberling's ongoing involvement in environmental affairs following his decision to retire from Congress in 1987. © 2009 by The The Kent State University Press. All rights reserved.
Cooperative federalism is about how land use control relates to federal natural resources law, especially the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This paper discusses cooperative federalism for habitat conservation. First, the narrow model of pollution control law is reviewed and some alternative schemes are described. The alternative, a broader conception of cooperative federalism is, in many ways, better suited to the problems of coordinating habitat management between local regulators and national policymakers. Second, an ESA experiment adapting the pollution control model to salmon habitat protection and enhancement in the Puget Sound region is outlined. The example illustrates a kind of Gresham's Law of regulatory choice: lax standards drive stringent standards out of circulation.
There is substantial loss of life and property in the wild land urban interface areas that burn in the US. But there are many risks from fire even in unoccupied areas. Most western landscapes were altered profoundly in the effort to eradicate the ineradicable, creating a mosaic of fire regime conditions. Some forest types like Southwest ponderosa pine which are adapted to frequent, low-intensity surface fires are amenable to a range of fire suppression tactics. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been developing wildfire and fuel models for years, most notably a model-compiling system known as LANDFIRE, to assess and compare fire risks. Ecological systems have their own temporal rhythms and spatial distributions. The culturally-formed identities, institutions, and jurisdictions have theirs. The uptake of learning or speculation from one place into a central government that then sets policy for all places must proceed with extreme caution in this planning environment.
When the national park system was first established in 1916, the goal "to conserve unimpaired" seemed straightforward. But Robert Keiter argues that parks have always served a variety of competing purposes, from wildlife protection and scientific discovery to tourism and commercial development. In this trenchant analysis, he explains how parks must be managed more effectively to meet increasing demands in the face of climate, environmental, and demographic changes.Taking a topical approach, Keiter traces the history of the national park idea from its inception to its uncertain future. Thematic chapters explore our changing conceptions of the parks as wilderness sanctuaries, playgrounds, educational facilities, and more. He also examines key controversies that have shaped the parks and our perception of them.Ultimately, Keiter demonstrates that parks cannot be treated as special islands, but must be managed as the critical cores of larger ecosystems. Only when the National Park Service works with surrounding areas can the parks meet critical habitat, large-scale connectivity, clean air and water needs, and also provide sanctuaries where people can experience nature. Today's mandate must remain to conserve unimpaired but Keiter shows how the national park idea can and must go much farther.Professionals, students, and scholars with an interest in environmental history, national parks, and federal land management, as well as scientists and managers working on adaptation to climate change should find the book useful and inspiring.
In the midst of the hydraulic fracturing revolution, elected officials in Mora County, New Mexico recently banned all oil and gas production within the county. But the officials went even further, stripping corporations of constitutional rights and declaring the constitutions of the United States and the state of New Mexico illegal if interpreted as inconsistent with the ordinance. Why would a small rural county like Mora with no oil and gas operations to speak of adopt such an extreme ordinance? This article applies economics, political choice, and localism theories to argue that Mora County’s decision may be at least partly explained by special interest group influence. The severance of land into separate surface and mineral estates exacerbates the influence disparity by concentrating votes in residents with little to no participation in the proceeds of production. Reasonable, traditional land use restrictions certainly have a place to protect truly local interests. This article maintains, however, that outright bans and extreme restrictions improperly infringe upon state interests.
The resolution of multiple use conflicts through place-based (national forest-specific) legislation has recently received increased interest. Most of these proposals combine wilderness designation, restoration objectives, economic development, funding arrangements, and other provisions, in a conservation package to be considered by Congress. Interest in the place-based legislative approach is precipitated by numerous factors, including perceptions of agency gridlock, problems related to forest planning, unresolved roadless and wilderness issues, and the embrace of collaboration. Though the national forests have a more unified governing framework than other federal land systems, the U.S. Forest Service has implemented place-based legislation in a few cases. This Article reviews these cases, and then presents a short case study focused on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership in Montana, which has proposed a place-based bill currently being debated. A brief review of other place-based proposals is also provided. We neither endorse nor oppose these proposals at this point. Instead, we ask a series of questions that we hope will help structure future analysis and debate of place-based national forest legislation. We ask questions pertaining to governance, conflict resolution, precedent, wilderness designation, and funding.
Providing a bold and original rethinking of environmental ethics, Ben Minteer's Refounding Environmental Ethics will help ethicists and their allies resolve critical debates in environmental policy and conservation practice. Minteer considers the implications of John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy for environmental ethics, politics, and practice. He provides a new and compelling intellectual foundation for the field-one that supports a more activist, collaborative and problem-solving philosophical enterprise. Combining environmental ethics, democratic theory, philosophical pragmatism, and the environmental social sciences, Minteer makes the case for a more experimental, interdisciplinary, and democratic style of environmental ethics-one that stands as an alternative to the field's historically dominant nature-centered outlook. Minteer also provides examples of his pragmatic approach in action, considering a wide range of application and issues, including invasive species, ecological research, biodiversity loss, protected area management, and conservation under global climate change.
It is hard to make a desert in a place that receives sixty inches of rain each year. But after decades of copper mining, all that remained of the old hardwood forests in the Ducktown Mining District of the southern Appalachian Mountains was a fifty-square mile barren expanse of heavily gullied red hills--a landscape created by sulfur dioxide smoke from copper smelting and destructive logging practices. InDucktown Smoke, Duncan Maysilles examines this environmental disaster, one of the worst the South has experienced, and its impact on environmental law and Appalachian conservation. Beginning in 1896, the widening destruction wrought in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina by Ducktown copper mining spawned hundreds of private lawsuits, culminating inGeorgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., the U.S. Supreme Court's first air pollution case. In its 1907 decision, the Court recognized for the first time the sovereign right of individual states to protect their natural resources from transborder pollution, a foundational opinion in the formation of American environmental law. Maysilles reveals how the Supreme Court case brought together the disparate forces of agrarian populism, industrial logging, and the forest conservation movement to set a legal precedent that remains relevant in environmental law today. © 2011 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
In this book Richard N. L. Andrews looks at American environmental policy over the past four hundred years, shows how it affects environmental issues and public policy decisions today, and poses the central policy challenges for the future. This second edition brings the book up to date through President George W. Bush's first term and gives the current state of American environmental politics and policy. "A guide to what every organizational decision maker, public and private, needs to know in an era in which environmental issues have become global."-Lynton K. Caldwell, Public Administration Review. "A wonderful text for students and scholars of environmental history and environmental policy."-William L. Andreen, Environmental History.
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) emerged in the late 1980s as an alternative to the piecemeal, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach to natural resource management that dominated the twentieth century. EBM features three central attributes: (1) planning at a landscape scale, (2) collaboration with stakeholders, and (3) adaptive and flexible implementation. According to its proponents, EBM can generate management that is not only ecologically sensitive and responsive to new scientific information but also widely accepted. Application of EBM has yielded some important environmental benefits, including improvements in scientists' understanding of large-scale ecosystems. Those advances in knowledge, however, have not necessarily translated into the kinds of political and policy changes that the proponents of EBM had hoped for. Nor have they yielded more resilient ecosystems. Instead, in prominent cases of EBM, powerful interests have dominated the collaborative planning process, and flexible implementation has allowed those who are not committed to evade responsibility for implementing environmental sustainability measures. Simply enhancing scientific models to better assess complex risks will not ensure that EBM yields genuine ecological restoration. Also important are a credible and stringent regulatory framework and political leaders who place a premium on ecological integrity. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
The chapters of this book describe various perspectives from the social sciences of place-based conservation. The prescriptive implications are often close to the surface and become entangled with them. This chapter highlights four overlapping approaches to the practice of place-based conservation and acknowledges the difficulty of separating descriptions from prescriptions: (1) a planning process, (2) an emergent process, (3) an organizing concept, and (4) a framework for policy. Yet to be considered are the incorporation of cultivating new communication channels, developing civic capacity, identifying appropriate roles for expertise, integrating multiple geographic scales, and customizing governance strategies. Addressing these challenges will support transitions to place-based conservation.
The growing interest in community-based collaboration (CBC) has provoked both enthusiasmandskepticism.Thisarticleshedssomelightontheclaimsofbothproponents andskepticsbypresentingdataonnearly50casesofCBConfederallandsandresources in the Rocky Mountain West. The findings indicate that participants are generally satisfied with the process and outcomes of CBC; CBC tends to open and inclusive of all interests, viewpoints, and stakeholders; CBC fosters informed decision making; CBC is efficient in terms of time and money; CBC produces valuable outcomes; CBC is often better than its alternatives; and CBC is slowly realigning the roles of citizens and public officials. This article also offers some insights on evaluating collaboration.
The growing interest in community-based collaboration (CBC) has provoked both enthusiasm and skepticism. This article sheds some light on the claims of both proponents and skeptics by presenting data on nearly 50 cases of CBC on federal lands and resources in the Rocky Mountain West. The findings indicate that participants are generally satisfied with the process and outcomes of CBC; CBC tends to open and inclusive of all interests, viewpoints, and stakeholders; CBC fosters informed decision making; CBC is efficient in terms of time and money; CBC produces valuable outcomes; CBC is often better than its alternatives; and CBC is slowly realigning the roles of citizens and public officials. This article also offers some insights on evaluating collaboration.
Conserving biological diversity in a changing climate poses major challenges for land managers and society. Effective adaptive
strategies for dealing with climate change require a socio-ecological systems perspective. We highlight some of the projected
ecological responses to climate change in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A and identify possible adaptive actions that federal
forest managers could take. The forest landscape, ownership patterns and recent shift toward ecologically based forest management
provide a good starting place for conserving biological diversity under climate change. Nevertheless, undesirable changes
in species and ecosystems will occur and a number of adaptive actions could be undertaken to lessen the effects of climate
change on forest ecosystems. These include: manipulation of stand and landscape structure to increase ecological resistance
and resilience; movement of species and genotypes; and engaging in regional, multi-ownership planning to make adaptive actions
more effective. Although the language and goals of environmental laws and policies were developed under the assumption of
stable climate and disturbance regimes, they appear to be flexible enough to accommodate many adaptive actions. It is less
certain, however, if sufficient social license and economic capacity exist to undertake these actions. Given the history of
contentious and litigious debate about federal forest management in this region, it is likely that some of these actions will
be seen as double-edge swords, spurring social resistance, especially where actions involve cutting trees. Given uncertainties
and complexity, collaborative efforts that promote learning (e.g. adaptive management groups) must be rejuvenated and expanded.
KeywordsLandscape management-Disturbances-Regional planning-Adaptive management-Environmental laws
This article is based on a multimethod study designed to clarify influences on wildfire hazard vulnerability in Arizona's White Mountains, USA. Findings reveal that multiple factors operating across scales generate socially unequal wildfire risks. At the household scale, conflicting environmental values, reliance on fire insurance and firefighting institutions, a lack of place dependency, and social vulnerability (e.g., a lack of financial, physical, and/or legal capacity to reduce risks) were found to be important influences on wildfire risk. At the regional-scale, the shift from a resource extraction to environmental amenity-based economy has transformed ecological communities, produced unequal social distributions of risks and resources, and shaped people's social and environmental interactions in everyday life. While working-class locals are more socially vulnerable than amenity migrants to wildfire hazards, they have also been more active in attempting to reduce risks in the aftermath of the disastrous 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. Social tensions between locals and amenity migrants temporarily dissolved immediately following the disaster, only to be exacerbated by the heightened perception of risk and the differential commitment to hazard mitigation displayed by these groups over a 2-year study period. Findings suggest that to enhance wildfire safety, environmental managers should acknowledge the environmental benefits associated with hazardous landscapes, the incentives created by risk management programs, and the specific constraints to action for relevant social groups in changing human-environmental context.
In 1977 the confrontation between timber interests and conservationists over expansion of the Redwood National park captured national attention. The author discusses the case in detail and points out that it illustrates the necessity of preserving wilderness areas in complete ecological units. The boundaries of the original Park did not fit with hydrological and ecological reality and the resulting damage had jeopardised the whole park. The case was resolved in favour of the conservationists on the basis of the public trust doctrine, namely the Department of the Interior had a duty to manage the Park properly. However, how this was to be done was not made clear by the Court. -T.O'Riordan
In the American West, polarization over environmental and natural resource issues has become infamous. To break the logjams and promote progress, the region's governors have come together to propound eight principles designed to produce compromise and consensus and, thus, solutions that will be widely accepted and more effective While there are successes to report, the governors acknowledge that the Enlibra Principles will not be appropriate in every situation, particularly with an issue that is highly polarized and where a final decision by a court or governmental agency may be necessary to resolve it. Regardless, there are many instances where Enlibra offers an opportunity to redirect energy away from polarized battles and toward solving common problems. The value of using the Enlibra doctrine will be augmented after many more years of practice and education as Enlibra gains a national constituency. Without more efforts to use the path illuminated by Enlibra, the ideological positions that often color the debate over environmental issues will likely increase, leading to issues that are even more difficult to resolve.
This article examines whether the Alsea decision's definition of species is consistent with the Endangered Species Act by examining the language of the ESA and Congressional intent. This article then examines some of the implications of the Alsea decision in the Northwest. Counting hatchery salmon would likely result in the removal of most salmon ESUs from the endangered or threatened list, ending many of the costly restrictions imposed by the ESA. In particular, Part I discusses the ESA provisions and congressional intent regarding the definition of species that is pertinent to understanding Alsea. Part II describes some of the effects of salmon listings in the Northwest. Part III describes the Alsea case, including the history of the Oregon coastal coho ESU listing and the procedural history of the case. Part IV analyzes the court's legal reasoning in Alsea. Finally, Part V considers the implications of the case and the potential structure and outcome of the current NMFS's policy review.
Ecosystem management increasingly is viewed as a new “paradigm”; of public land management. The literature is becoming replete with studies of ecosystem management, including its implementation. Yet many of the studies are overly reliant on a technical and expert‐centered mode of implementation, as well as being somewhat uncritical about the value of ecosystem management. This policy review argues that much can be learned from the early days of the Progressive movement about how to bring about change in public land management. Specifically, early Progressives often were successful because they were able to link scientific management with key democratic values. This is the task that is facing ecosystem management advocates today as they confront a public interested, yet suspicious, of this evolving new land management regime.
In 1987 the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service launched a joint coordination and planning process for the Greater Yellowstone region, commonly called the “Vision”; exercise, and produced a draft document in 1990 and a final in 1991. Public reaction was fierce: Traditional commodity extraction industries strongly opposed it, while conservationists failed to support or improve it. The process was perceived by many as a failure. Through extensive literature searches and interviews, we identified four major explanations for why the process failed: The agencies had unclear objectives, their environment was politicized, they miscalculated public reaction, and they used deliberately vague language to preserve their discretion and minimize accountability. We define all these as analytical errors, that is, failure to orient to the problem and to analyze the context of the problem adequately. We also explain the Vision exercise as a progression through the first phases of the public policy process (initiation, estimation, and selection), demonstrating a host of weaknesses common to each phase. We then offer six lessons to improve public policy processes for natural resource management in the Yellowstone region and to develop a successful model for ecosystem management elsewhere.
Congress has responded to the power planning and conservation issues confronting the Pacific Northwest by removing from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) major responsibilities for such matters and placing them in the hands of a regional state-appointed council. By requiring widespread public participation in the Council's decision-making process, and by also requiring the development of a comprehensive program for fish and wildlife - which must show deference to the recommendations of fish and wildlife entities - Congress has clearly mandated that the histroically disenfranchised fish and wildlife interests are to play an integral role in power marketing and planning decisions. In addition, by giving BPA and other water-management agencies an independent mandate to provide equitable treatment for fish and wildlife, Congress has just as clearly mandated that those resources are no longer to be ignored by these agencies in order that power production may be maxmized.The Regional Power Act is designed to silence the loud and frequently voiced complaint that the costs of accommodating fish and wildlife needs - both in terms of power and money - are simply are too great to bear. BPA must now recognize that the protection, mitigation, and enhancement of fish and wildlife is a cost of doing business; all consumers of electric power in the region must bear that cost.
Federal land bureaus are developing a new approach to the management of large areas of public lands called ecosystem management. That approach remains fraught with many conceptual and implementation difficulties. One of the most important of the those difficulties concerns the relationship of scientific/professional modes of decision making with democratic decision processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the first large scale attempt to implement ecosystem management in the Greater Yellowstone area and the difficulties that effort had in reconciling these modes of decision making. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how these two methods of resource decision making might be brought closer together.
All of these conclusions support the notion that issues of federalism are best left to the national political process. Given the complex interrelationship of federal tax, spending, and regulatory policies, it is impossible for federal courts, bound by the narrow constraints of party-defined litigation, to assess the fiscal burdens of individual federal programs in the proper context. These issues are viewed more appropriately by elected federal officials in the course of the national political process. The fact that states and cities remain net fiscal beneficiaries of intergovernmental programs suggests that lower levels of government do receive adequate protection and representation in this manner.
This article addresses a range of opinions represented in the U.S. Congress about the feasibility of adopting a national ecosystem-based approach for public land and natural resources management. Those who support `ecosystem management' are hoping for a formal recognition of the ecosystem-based approach as standard operating procedure for the U.S. Government. However, opponents have come to challenge the concept on both its scientific and constitutional merits. Those who claim to be practicing ecosystem management have watched intently during the 104th Congress to see whether national initiatives: (i) can adapt to conservative concepts of governance and budgetary pressures, (ii) will collapse in a general regulatory retreat with fading commitment from the Clinton Administration, or (iii) will be adopted as U.S. policy for managing America's publicly owned natural, cultural, and economic resources.
Many of the common `tools' for developing information and implementing activities for ecosystem management are based on a multi-scale framework. This paper highlights the major elements of scale and level associated with an ecosystem management approach from two differing perspectives. The first summarizes a general framework for concepts recognizing multiple scales in four specific dimensions: biological, temporal, social and spatial. The second summarizes a current partnership among several US Government agencies to utilize remote sensing technologies as a common basis for the development of certain types of scale-dependent information for ecosystem management. Scale and level in ecological contexts are recognized as continuous variables, highly related to the landscapes, features and relationships of a particular situation, as well as the specific interests of the observer. An initial simplification of scale, as related to remotely sensed data, to support the continuing evolution of ecosystem management is a necessary step in developing common understanding and information across large areas.
Government management and protection of ecosystems is often hailed as being a scientifically sound new approach to natural resource management. Little thought, however, has been given to the infirmities of the ecosystem concept when it is moved from the realm of research to that of public policy. This paper argues that government management and protection of ecosystems does not provide a rationale basis for land management policies. The arbitrary and capricious geographic nature of ecosystems makes them ill-suited to serve a spatial guides for governance while the goals of ecosystem management are nebulous at best. Policies of federal management and protection of ecosystems as entities on the landscape will inevitably lead to increased restrictions on the use of land and natural resources and to additional regulatory burdens.
This paper examines how the USDA Forest Service (USFS) adapted to the changing needs of American society in its industrial (about 1900–1969) and post-industrial (1970 up to present) stages of socio–economic development. Several marker events in Forest Service adaptation to a post-industrial American society are examined (e.g., Bitterroot clearcutting controversy). These events illustrate American cultural changes that have moved the agency toward its current `ecosystem management' era of organizational evolution. Shifts and trends in agency values, policies, structures and operation to embrace and implement ecosystem management are examined.
We searched the statutory codes of all 50 states to locate provisions applicable to endangered and threatened species. The state statutes were compared to 6 components of the US Endangered Species Act: (1) coverage; (2) listing procedures and requirements under section 4; (3) habitat designation and protection procedures and criteria under sections 4 and 7; (4) prohibitions on commerce and taking under section 9; (5) exceptions to the prohibitions on commerce and taking and (6) conservation planning under section 4. State endangered and threatened species legislation is far less comprehensive than the federal act. Only 15 states have statutes that cover all plants and animals. Similarly, only 11 states offer any protection for taxa below the subspecific level. 45 states have provisions for listing species independently of the federal act but only 8 authorize emergency listings. 43 states have no provisions authorizing the designation of critical habitat; 39 states offer no protection against habitat destruction on either private or publicly owned lands. Most states prohibit commercial transactions and taking of listed animal species; plant species receive less protection. Only 3 states include any requirements that the wildlife management agency engage in recovery planning processes. In the absence of a federal statute to protect endangered and threatened species, we question whether current state protection is either adequate or would be maintained. We briefly examined legislation on endangered species in two other countries with federal systems of government, Australia and Canada. Canada lacked a federal statute. Assessment of national, state and territorial legislation in Australia revealed several similarities and differences with the United States endangered species legislation. Differences suggested an alternative to the top down approach embodied in the United States Endangered Species Act.
Ecosystem management argues for the maintenance of native biological diversity, in addition to commodity and amenity uses, on our public lands. Heretofore, natural resource management agencies have focused on managing for single species, usually those that are commercially valuable, threatened or endangered, or over-abundant. For a variety of reasons, the future of public-land management will place increasing importance on managing for species communities. Three approaches which can be used to manage for communities include: (1) a species approach, (2) an ecological processes approach, and (3) a landscape approach. Each method is briefly discussed.
Ecosystem management involves long-term management of whole ecosystems, across political boundaries as necessary, to sustain ecosystem integrity. The conservation biology view of ecosystem management tends to be biocentric, placing primary emphasis on sustaining the integrity of natural ecosystem processes and native species. The US Forest Service favors an anthropocentric approach in which an array of public preferences will determine the extent to which utilitarian (commodities, recreation, etc.) and natural (biodiversity) values will be emphasized in defining and sustaining ecosystem integrity. Conservation biologists have suggested creation of a national network of regional reserve systems, with core areas, buffer zones, and landscape linkages, to help maintain biodiversity, while the US Forest Service is promoting the use of timber management and other forest practices to mimic historic biodiversity patterns across the landscape. These ideas are not mutually exclusive, could potentially be complementary, and would be long-term, very challenging efforts. Political support for implementation of these ideas is uncertain. Legislative proposals to transfer large amounts of multiple-use, public lands to state and/or private ownership, if enacted, are likely to render these approaches ineffective. Compelling scientific evidence from conservation biology argues that failure to apply some sort of ecosystem management to the remaining natural and seminatural parts of the US landscape will result in continued loss of natural biodiversity, eventually leading to a `tragedy of the biodiversity commons'. Failure to support the present federal land management goal of providing publicly desired resources while sustaining ecosystem integrity can be expected to have negative effects on ecosystem services, regardless of the emphasis placed on naturalness. Broad legislative guidelines favoring maintenance of natural biodiversity, but allowing a much greater contribution of local communities to land management planning, offers the potential for sustaining both ecosystem integrity and local/regional economies. This approach is risky with respect to sustaining natural ecosystem integrity but can, perhaps, be guided by knowledge obtained from adaptive management. Prospects for success would be strengthened by financial incentives to nongovernmental entities for protection of natural biodiversity, concern for private property rights, and by different kinds of stakeholders who share a common ethical and/or cultural concern for the natural environment of their communities.
This article provides an overview of the process used by about 20 agencies of the United States federal government to review federal efforts to adopt an ecosystem approach and to recommend ways to strengthen this approach. The method utilized by these agencies was to form a Working Group representing each agency and to select seven case study sites where federal agencies were already working together to coordinate their efforts across an ecosystem. Based upon the results of the case studies and discussions with people involved in other ecosystem efforts, the Working Group identified key issues that need to be considered in order to strengthen this approach. Five issue groups were formed to further refine these issues and to make recommendations for effectively dealing with them. This paper provides brief descriptions of the case study sites, reviews the key issues and presents highlights of recommendations. It is the work of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of their respective federal agencies or of the Interagency Ecosystem Management Task Force.
Primary scleral buckling procedures were performed for rhegmatogenous retinal detachments in a consecutive series of 179 pseudophakic eyes. Most cases involved eyes in which extracapsular surgery had been combined with iridocapsular implants or posterior chamber lenses or in which iris-fixation IOLs were placed following intracapsular surgery. The characteristics of the detachments were similar, regardless of the type of cataract surgery employed, although there was a trend toward an increased incidence of significant preoperative proliferative vitreoretinopathy in the intracapsular cases. Anatomic success rates were greater than 90% in all groups. There was a trend for lower visual acuities following successful surgery in the eyes in which intracapsular surgery had been performed than in those following extracapsular procedures.
The preservation and maintenance of natural park ecosystems, with modern man's being restricted to generally nonconsumptive uses of the park, represents one end of a spectrum of land use that extends through exploitation of natural ecosystems to the development of simplified agricultural ecosystems. Criteria for management of a park ecosystem must, of necessity, differ from criteria for other uses of land, since park management involves preventing or compensating for the influence of man. The objectives for natural areas appear to be ecologically feasible if it is recognized that these areas have a finite capacity for absorbing man's consumptive and disruptive influences. The interpretation of ecosystems to park visitors provides an opportunity to contribute to an environmental ethic that extends beyond the park environment.